The present invention relates to an operation management system of a radio communication system and a method thereof, and an operation management apparatus and a program to be employed for it, and more particularly to an operation management technique in a wireless LAN (Local Area Network) including a plurality of wireless base stations.
Conventionally, as a tool for displaying setting/statistical information of the wireless LAN, there has been known a management tool of a wireless LAN access point (AP) (which is often installed as a Web server within the AP). This tool makes it possible to obtain statistical information associated with an operation such as a packet number to be transmitted/received in the AP or an error packet number, or information of a channel in use. Acquiring and analyzing this statistical numerical information allows an operational situation of the above wireless LAN to be grasped; however the analysis demands high technical abilities and experience. That is, only based upon the numerical value of the statistical information, it is not easy to determine whether the operational situation is good or bad from information acquired by an administrator.
Also, as a technology of visually displaying the operational situation, there has been known the technology disclosed in a patent document 1, in which the effect that an interference situation in the AP was graphed and displayed according to its interference ratio was described, and its display example is shown in FIG. 17. The use situation of a wireless medium in one certain AP, which is divided into three kinds of a situation where an appliance belonging to the above AP (its own group) is used, a situation where an appliance belonging to the other AP (other group) is used and a noise situation, is displayed according to respective ratios for which these situations account. The administrator, who views the display as shown in FIG. 17, thereby to be able to easily grasp that a ratio at which the appliance belonging to the above AP is used is low or a ratio of the noise is high, can recognize that the operation is a problem.
Based upon this recognition of the problem, a countermeasure of removing a noise source or the like is taken responding to a necessity.
[Patent document 1] JP-P1998-93616A
However, the technology of the patent document 1, which is capable of easily grasping whether the interference situation associated with a single AP is good or bad, is not able to go so far as to grasp a range in which the above operational situation (interference situation) exerts an influence. Also, a wireless LAN system, in which a plurality of the APs are installed and this plurality of the APs are employed, thereby to cover the area range to a some extent, is taken into consideration, in which the problem exists that the situation of the entirety of the system that is comprised of a plurality of the APs is impossible to grasp simultaneously. For example, in a case where the display as shown in FIG. 18 was generated AP by AP, it is sometimes determined that a plurality of the APs are a problem respectively. At this moment, as a method of deciding a priority order in which the countermeasure is taken, it can be considered to employ an influence range of the AP, i.e. a space of a cell that is a coverage range; however the problem exists that it is impossible to make a determination only with the display as shown in FIG. 18.
Also, in a case where a user who used a terminal made a report “performance of the LAN system deteriorated” to the administrator, the administrator has to investigate which AP the terminal of the above user makes a connection to because the display as shown in FIG. 18 is output AP by AP. However, it takes labor and time to investigate the connection destination AP of the above terminal because the user who uses the terminal is never aware of the AP to which its own terminal is connected, so it is impossible to quickly cope with claims of the user.
Also, conventionally, by acquiring the numerical value of setting/statistic information, or by making a graph display of the interference situation, the administrator specified operational situation for each AP, and specified the AP that was a connection destination of the user's terminal, thereby to estimate the performance of the terminal. However, normally, it was difficult for the operational administrator to estimate the performances of the terminal because the user used the AP that was a connection destination of the terminal without being aware thereof.